The Girl She Used to Be (17 page)

There was a war going on, stimulant versus sedative, and the basic summation is this: Caffeine wins.

The clock turns to 8:00
A.M.
exactly, and within a few seconds there is a gentle knock on my door. I hop up (I had three cups, not including the espresso)
and run to the door and see Jonathan through the peephole. He’s wearing jeans, a white tee, a navy V-neck sweater, and he
appears fresh showered and clean shaven.

I open it and laugh. “You could’ve come through the adjoining door, you know.”

“It seemed a little… inappropriate. Like I had some right to be in here anytime I wanted.” He looks down and notices
me in the robe—or rather, that I am wearing a robe and nothing else. He bites his lip and looks down the hall.

I smile, pull it tightly around me, and allow him to enter.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but I got you in at the spa at eight thirty.”

“They had an opening?”

He shrugs. “I made an opening.”

“No wonder Carla wants you.”

“It’s all smoke and mirrors. In New York, it’s my name doing the work; otherwise it’s just a matter of throwing money around.”

“You say that like you have no respect for yourself.”

He glances around the room for a moment, like he’s thinking about how to answer, then, as his eyes return to my face, he says,
“I don’t.”

I giggle, longer than I normally would at such a comment, and I can’t stop smiling.

Caffeine wins again.

“You seem like a decent guy to me, Jonathan.”

He shakes his head a little. “I’ve never really had to work hard at anything in my life. I’m
trying
to work hard, though. I want to be fair and honest.” He rubs his nose and sighs. “It would mean so much more if the cash
I was throwing around was money I’d earned from being a talented chef or a successful restaurateur. Or even if I’d legitimately
won it at the track. I mean, most of my income does come from above-board sources, but the other money poisons the whole wad.
Do I smell sausage?”

I slide in front of the room-service tray coquettishly. “I took the liberty. Sorry.”

“No, good move. We won’t have time to eat before your spa appointments anyway.”

“Appointments. I have more than one?”

He smiles and says, “Today is all about you, Melody.”

I smirk. “What do you mean, today?”

He moves toward me, like he’s going to plant one on me, but he just pats me on the shoulder a few times and says, “Today,
as in all day. You’re getting the works: massage, facial, hair, manicure, pedicure, some sort of upper-echelon skin treatment,
and a couple of things I didn’t really understand and probably cannot pronounce correctly.”

I stare at him blankly. “So, I’ll be done around…”

“Dinnertime.”

I bridge the distance between us, stand on my toes, and throw my arms around his neck. I close my eyes and gently, carefully
press my lips to his, hold them there for three seconds, then move my mouth to his ears and whisper, “Thank you, Jonathan.
Something this wonderful could only come from the money you
earned
.”

As I hug him, I feel my robe fall open; I keep my arms around his neck anyway. The cool air hits my body and my skin comes
alive with goose bumps. Piloerection has become a regular part of my life. I hear Jonathan gulp as he carefully reaches down
to my waist—and I mean
carefully
; his hands never brush my skin—and takes the ends of my robe and deftly places them together. I release him and we both watch
as he slowly ties the belt.

When we pull apart our eyes are locked on one another.

Jonathan presses his lips together like he’s savoring the taste of me. Then, after a moment, he says, “I’m picking up a hollandaise.”

I squint. “And to think I let you in my room at such an unscrupulous hour.”

“Worst of all, it tastes like those bastards used tarragon vinegar instead of fresh lemon. In a hollandaise? If one of my
chefs did that, he’d be at the bottom of the East River. You want me to have the chef eliminated?”

“Drawn and quartered.”

“Eh, my horses are at the stable. But if you let me borrow your spoon, I can file it into a shiv.”

Our smiles fade a little. His self-deprecation is humorous, but it’s hard to ignore the obvious references; a person can only
disparage or undervalue himself so far without the truth getting in the way. He looks away and sighs. I am about to ask the
question he knows I am about to ask.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

Jonathan looks around the room like it’s bugged, like this has all been one big setup. Then he leans toward me and says loudly,
“No.”

I grab his shirt in an amateurishly seductive manner and say, “You mean, I would’ve been your first?”

He sighs and touches my hand. “That was the plan.”

I look up at him and smile. “Well, if you keep treating me this way, you may end up being
my
first, too.”

Thinking out loud may have finally done me in.

He drops my hand and backs up a step as though I’d just told him I was fourteen years old.

“You mean, you’re a…”

I sigh and give in; there’s really no point in trying to pretend I didn’t say it. “Yes, a
virgin
, Jonathan. What’s the matter, you’ve never killed a virgin?”

“I told you I’m not gonna kill you.”

“It was a euphemism. Would you prefer I use the term
deflower
?”

“How is this possible?”

“What do you mean? You think there’s some right of passage that occurs when you’re a teenager? I kept my legs closed, Jonathan.”

He scratches his neck. “How old are you?”

“Depends on what persona you want me to use. If I use Linda Simms, I’m about to turn thirty. If I use Shelly Jones, I’m a
spry twenty-four.” He waits me out. I tilt my head a little and sigh. “I’m twenty-six.”

Jonathan sits on the sofa near the window. “And you never… you never found someone you loved enough?”

I sit across from him on the bed and tuck my legs under me and cover myself with the robe. “I’d love to say I was being morally
responsible, but the truth is I never allowed myself to get close to anyone—physically or emotionally. There was just too
much risk.”

He bites his lip as he considers my comment. Eventually, he asks, “Risk for whom?”

For everyone
should be my answer, but I get lost in a memory and I’m not sure how much time has lapsed but Jonathan never snaps me out
of it. I stare at the pattern in the carpet and my eyes become unfocused. Rather than trying to explain my purity, I let the
memory flow from my mind to his ears.

Softly, like I’m trying to keep it between the two of us, I tell him how, when I was a teenager, I thought I’d found the love
of my life—like, I suppose, most kids do around that age. Mine was a boy named Brian Basinger, an athletic, pockmarked lad
with electric eyes and tight blond curls that I would twist whenever he would kiss me. He was funny and cute and smart and
for whatever reason he seemed to like being with me. We’d go to the movies and eat junk food and take long walks and talk
about our futures and what we wanted to be, mostly because I’d never really mastered the art of talking about a false past.

One night, Brian and I were snuggling in the basement of my home in Powhatan, North Carolina, a third of the way through
Silence of the Lambs
. I’d grown to love scary movies, not because I was some fan of the genre as much as it gave me a valid excuse to jump into
Brian’s arms. Around the time Clarice and Hannibal were getting down to the nitty-gritty, I heard a rumbling upstairs, a looming
malignity, and my instinct was much like a Kansan sensing a twister not far afield. I immediately went cold and clammy, and
I closed my eyes and buried my head in Brian’s chest. And I remember how he put his arms around me as though he wanted to
protect me—but he could only safeguard me from the characters in the movie; he could never protect me from what was coming.

Then came the stomping of booted feet, the loud voices, the frantic vibrations of things being moved around, the now unmistakable
music of people in a hurry. I buried myself in Brian, deeper and deeper, praying that what was coming would go away. Though,
just as certain as I was, you too know what was coming.

The feds.

Many miles and days later, I found out that someone had left a message on our answering machine stating we’d all be dead in
twenty-four hours. They say it sounded like a kid calling from a pay phone and that it was probably a prank, a horrible coincidence,
but they could not and would not take the chance.

But that night I kept the faith, holding on to Brian with all my might, eyes closed, praying silently. The movie was raging
on while men shuffled quickly down the steps to our basement. I pulled my face from Brian’s chest and watched him. His eyes
were locked on the television, totally engrossed in the picture.

He turned to me and said, “I hate this part.”

And as the marshals pushed open the door to our rec room, I stared back at Brian and said, “I hate this part too.”

Brian had no idea who my family really was. I kept my arms around him, latching on with all my strength, but the marshals
just kept yelling, saying we had to go now. I hugged him with everything I had in me, but the marshals must have been through
this before and they grabbed my body and pulled me off Brian. He tried to hold on to me, too, but the marshals pushed him
back. Brian was just screaming at me, “
Terry, Terry
—what’s going on? What’s happening?” And as one of the marshals picked me up and threw me over his shoulder all I could answer
was, “I love you, Brian. I love you.”

Brian Basinger was never a part of my life again.

Jonathan and I sit in silence for a moment, then he says, “Literally pulled from the arms of your lover.”

“Within the same minute I was yanked from Brian’s grip, I was tossed in the back of a Chevy Impala and I watched our home
disappear through the rear window.” I sit up and play with the belt of my robe. “I still wonder to this day what must have
run through his mind, watching my family scramble out the back door, being driven away by the Marshals Service, leaving him
at our house and no one else, all the lights on, back door wide open, television still blaring Clarice and Hannibal. I always
wondered if Brian took in our pet bird and kept him from starving to death.”

“So,” Jonathan says as he walks over and sits next to me on the bed, “you never tried to find Brian after that? Never tried
to call him?”

“No. I mean, I wanted to, but… I figured it was pointless. It would be a brief, awkward conversation, mostly just an
explanation, and then he would move on with his life and I would move on with my life. My
lives
.”

I clutch the robe to my chest and lie back on the bed.

“Does that answer your question? I never saw a reason to love, Jonathan, because it meant that one day I would either leave
someone behind or take him with me and put him in equal danger.” I laugh a little. “Besides, how betrayed do you think my
lover would be once he found I had lied to him about who I really was for all of our days together? It’s a real mess. I’ve
thought about this for years and years, and as far as I can tell there’s no loophole.”

Jonathan gets up and walks to the window but merely looks down at the floor. “I’m sorry, Melody.”

“For?”

“Everything. For every single moment of suffering and heartache you’ve been through—because it all comes back to my family.
If I had a father who did something legitimate with his life, we wouldn’t be here.”

I turn my head to catch his eye, but he’s still staring at the floor. “True, but… you realize we never would’ve met if
your dad hadn’t gutted that guy at Vincent’s—and, of course, if they hadn’t sent you to knock me off.”

He finally spins around. “Well, regardless of why we’re here now, I’m happy to say that my first memory of you is that little
girl with bouncing curls who held her mother’s hand on the sidewalk in front of Vincent’s.” He comes over and kneels on the
floor and rests his arms on the bed. “I’m glad I got to see your innocence—even if it was just for a few seconds—and that
you were once happy and at peace.”

I smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever be at peace again, Jonathan. I mean, what are we doing? Where are we going? I’m not exactly
at peace with meeting the people who want me dead.” I laugh a little. “But I’m happy now… oddly, because of you.” I reach
out and touch his hand.

He looks down, then quickly turns his head to the clock. “Well, if you think you’re happy now,” he says, “just wait till you’ve
had a full day of being pampered! We better get moving.”

It’s as though the mere mention of my lifelong abstinence has convinced him my body will explode if he tries to explore it.
Little does he know that I am the New World.

I catch up with Jonathan in the hall after a few minutes. I perused the bags he left in my room but I did not have time to
start removing all the tags and labels from the clothes, so I put on my worn jeans, a new T-shirt, and the green sweater,
which, at this point, is more about feeling good than looking good.

We take the elevator down to the second floor and he presents me to the ladies at the front of the spa like he’s bringing
in a foreign diplomat. When the ladies see him, they’re all smiles and coo “Good morning, Jonathan” as though they’ve known
him all his life, but I understand it’s probably an even mixture of his looks and charm and a mighty fistful of dollars.

The spa is chic and warm and smells of sweet chemicals. One of the clerks takes me by the arm like I’m some long-lost friend
and Jonathan follows a few steps behind. She asks me whether I’ve been here before and I tell her I’ve never been anywhere
even remotely spa-like and she assures me the experience will be memorable. She has me sit in a room with an elegant though
noisy waterfall in the corner, soft classical music playing, and plush seating. She points to a buffet of food across the
room: breads, yogurts, cheeses, pastries, and an assortment of fresh fruit that keep my attention while she goes on and on
about what they are going to do to me and how I am going to be transformed and how they will create a new me and all I can
think is “I want the original me, not another new me” and “Do people really eat star fruit?”